The inn at the edge of Kemet was quiet. The party had left behind the sprawling marble and gold of the capital and sought answers beyond politics and prophecy. Lantern light flickered against sandstone walls, and outside, the wind carried distant chants—almost mistaken for desert wind.

  Inside, Amon y beside Heka on a makeshift bed of travel furs and silks. Tonight, she was whole, not smoke, not a whisper. Her head rested near his chest as it rose with each breath. Her fingers traced idle shapes on his colrbone, as if memorizing him.

  “You still watch over me even as you rest.” Amon said softly.

  Heka smirked sleepily. “Always. Even the smoke dreams.”

  They fell asleep entwined; his arm wrapped protectively over her. The veil she usually cloaked him with was withdrawn—a moment of unguarded intimacy.

  As the hours passed, the smoke that clung to Amon’s skin shivered—then began to unravel. The bond Heka maintained like breath in her lungs... thinned.

  A backdoor creaked open, figures swathed in dark linens and powdered ash slipped into the room. Their movements were reverent, almost ritualistic. One carried a shard of obsidian that brought with it a faint. The shopkeeper from the damaged store, face shadowed by a hood, muttered a blessing in a forgotten tongue.

  They touched the obsidian to Amon’s chest—his body spasmed, and the smoke curled wildly... then went still. In that moment, he was cut from her, like breath stolen from a drowning soul. They dragged him away, silent as death, into the waiting night.

  Heka woke to cold silence, a few hours having passed. Her fingers reached instinctively to where Amon y—to find nothing but cold in his pce. She sat up. Smoke peeled off her body, it instinctively condensed into bdes that dissolved again. Her eyes fred, and the room became oppressively still under her wild gaze. She pced her hand to her chest, the connection felt faint. Weak. Wrong.

  Heka whispered, “Amon...” and heard nothing but silence to greet her. An ominous feeling welled up inside here, an intense sense of foreboding. She wanted to scream but stifled it instead; this was no pce to raise suspicion. She took a deep breath—and the room filled with smoke. It curled like ribbons around her arms and torso before it formed a flowing, living gown of shadow and ash.

  She walked barefoot through the inn, smoke poured from her skin, from her breath. The air rested on her like a weight on her chest. The pounding of her soles roused her companions.

  “They took him,” she said to the party as they rushed toward her. “I smell cinder, and the ash of old oaths. Follow. Now.”